Unpredictable Nature Comes Home To Roost

Animals Can Run Wild In Back-yard Refuges

Mother Nature is playing tricks on those among us who are seeking to get closer to her. Not mean tricks, mind you, but small reminders that there are unforeseen consequences to our actions.

Consequences such as skunks under the air conditioner and mice in the clothes dryer; a raccoon in the family room and rats in the back yard; an opossum that tears into lawn ornaments and attack birds chasing would-be human friends from their own land.

These are the unexpected, oddball side effects of a National Wildlife Federation campaign started 20 years ago to boost appreciation of nature among the scruffy urban lots and trim, well-fertilized lawns of subdivisions across the country.

Interest in the Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program, in which nature enthusiasts can plant a few trees and provide a water source and nesting areas to obtain certification as a wildlife refuge, started slowly. Buoyed by the environmental movement, however, more than 12,000 properties have become certified, including a miniature golf course in Virginia, a firehouse in San Francisco, 250 schools, about eight nursing homes and at least one fire escape-in addition to thousands of back yards.

But there have been a few surprises along the way.

"We get animals that we wish we didn't get sometimes, but there's no selection when you put out the bird feeder," said a Highland Park woman whose back yard was certified in 1991. "You take the good with the bad."

Added Craig Tufts, the federation's director of urban wildlife programs: "I've never felt that we've created a monster, but there have been a few times when I've thought, hmmm, have we let this thing get away from us?"

Since moving to her home near 117th Street and Halsted Street on the Far South Side in 1984, Deborah Brisco-Harvey gradually has converted the back yard into a bird sanctuary.

A couple months ago, she found out just how wild her habitat had become.

"I had a hawk chase me out of the yard," she said. The bird, an American kestrel, had spotted the shallow pond that Brisco-Harvey had created near the rear of her yard last summer, and became a bit troubled when Brisco-Harvey started to adjust a water hose feeding the pond.

"It was trying to attack me to get away, dive bombing and stuff," she said. "I was trying to tell this bird, `Hey, this is my back yard.' "

Then there was the time in the spring of 1992 when her yard looked more like the set of an Alfred Hitchcock film. She recorded the whole scene in detailed notes she compiles on events in her habitat.

Four or five red-winged blackbird "scouts," as she called them, flitted down and jumped around the yard. A few minutes later, they were joined by 103 of their closest friends.

Call Sue Helfer's Oak Park home and her answering machine greeting welcomes callers to the "certified wildlife sanctuary" that she has been nurturing for nearly two decades.

"I'm out bird-watching," her recorded voice says before the beep sounds.

Opossum-watching would be more in order, perhaps.

One particular opossum in Helfer's narrow back-yard habitat, which the federation certified in June, has a personality conflict with a carved wooden ram covered with sheepskin on Helfer's deck. The wooden ornament, which Helfer bought at a Navajo reservation about five years ago, is missing much of the fur on its face and flank.

Often, she'll step onto her deck and find the ram on its back in a patch of dirt a few feet below her.

"I thought it was the squirrels at first," Helfer said, "and I was trying to figure out how a squirrel could be strong enough to push this thing off the deck."

After coming upon this scattered tableau for the umpteenth time, Helfer spotted an opossum sunning itself on her fence, and deduced that it must be the culprit.

Originally, she was perturbed. But "it's out there and other animals think it's the enemy, so I just let it be."

Tufts, director of the program, can rattle off stories illustrating the peculiar turns the campaign has taken during two decades, like the gentleman in suburban Washington, D.C., who was thrilled at the raccoons crawling around his house even though the area was in the middle of a raccoon rabies epidemic.

After receiving a rabies inoculation, he set out about 50 pounds of suet to attract raccoons. His effort worked, but it also attracted some other guests: About 15 to 20 vultures began circling, and set up roosts amid a neighborhood of half-million dollar homes.

Most people who apply for certification are gardeners first and bird watchers second, Tufts said. Applications ask for detailed listings of food and water sources, wildlife cover and places to raise young.

Applicants also must submit a sketch of their landscape, and are asked to enclose snapshots along with a $15 fee. Staff at the federation review each application and decide which to certify.